‘Outer Range’ Season 2 Episode 2 Recap: Dream a Little Dream

When a show switches showrunners, the temptation to play armchair analyst about the results is strong. How much of what we’re watching is how the story was always intended to play out? How much is the revision or invention of the new guy in town? 

In the case of Outer Range, I can’t help but give into temptation and say that the seams of the switchover from the Brian Watkins era to Charles Murray era are showing a bit. But that’s okay, I think. Outer Range doesn’t have the benefit of the case-of-the-season structure utilized by the late, great Perry Mason reboot, which switched out showrunners from one season to the next without missing a beat. But when (for example) you make a big dramatic showing of sending Rhett and Maria out of town in the Season One finale, only to have them back in town permanently by the second episode of Season Two, it’s safe to say a beat has been missed. 

Perhaps that was always the intention, and the bison herd that sideswiped them into that weird billboard was fate intervening to keep them in Wabang. But that jibes with neither Cece’s kitchen table–upending declaration that “our family is gone,” nor with their escape from the town despite the bison incident in this very episode! Only Maria’s dopey choice of destination, requiring a route back through town, kept them in its clutches. Their weird non-journey over these past three episodes is truly confounding.

Other transitions, however, prove more sneakily seamless than they appear at first glance. Take Autumn, who spends the bulk of the episode playing the foul-mouthed but mostly docile sidekick to Royal and (especially) Cecilia. Indeed, when she does blow up and cuss everyone out, it’s in Cecilia’s direct defense against the pick-a-little ladies in her church. Especially now that she’s been separated from Billy Tillerson and his whole insane deal, the antichrist vibes she was radiating by the end of Season One appear to have been jettisoned in favor of a soft reboot. But then she borrows Cecilia’s bible, seemingly just to study how to make a more effective messiah straight from the source, and we’re back in business.

The Tillerson family remains as nutty as ever. When Billy emerges from his coma to reveal the arcane local symbol he carved in his chest, his father Wayne, brother Luke, and mother Patricia (Deirdre O’Connell) take it as a cue that the Abbotts were responsible for his shooting. This happens to be true, which is why he revealed the symbol, but it’s still unclear if the two symbols are directly connected, or if the similarity is coincidental.

Wayne vows revenge. Patricia, hilariously, tells him to knock it the hell off and call the cops. Luke, playing one parent against the other, takes Wayne’s side, then tells Patricia to trust him sotto voce. He’s been seeing things…differently, he explains.

You know who’s really been seeing things? Freaking Billy Tillerson. In a delightfully over-the-top dream sequence reminiscent of Misty’s psychedelic freakout in Season Two of Yellowjackets, Billy has a kaleidoscopic coma-dream of himself as a Roy Rogers cowboy in bright red, crooning to multiple Autumns. Pink hearts float across black-and-white imagery as he serenades her. It’s a fun sequence both in and of itself, and thanks to the aesthetic break it represents from the teal-and-orange tyranny of the rest of the episode, which is digitally color-graded to within an inch of its life.

In the present, Royal faces off with Dr. Nia Bintu (Yrsa Daley-Ward), the University of Wyoming scientist he briefly consulted about the ranch’s mystery mineral before recognizing a mining company in one of her desktop photographs from his vision of the dystopian future. Bintu has taken matters into her own hands and snuck onto his land unauthorized to take samples. Royal leaves her a sample of his own: a bullet, left on her desk as a warning. Later, he and Cecilia divulge virtually all their secrets, though they hide Perry’s plight from Autumn.

In the past, Royal has an even weirder situation on his hands. Newcomer “Ben Younger” reveals himself as Perry Abbott, Royal’s son from the future, fallen through the same time-hole through which Royal himself once traveled. Royal agrees to take him on as a farmhand, but there’s a catch: It’s Cece’s family’s farm, and they’re not married yet, so the move lands them both in hot water. In fact, Cecilia is currently dating none other than Wayne Tillerson (Daniel Abeles), a bit of backstory the couple (not to mention the entire first season of this show) had concealed all this time. Ben/Perry also earns the instant suspicion of Cole Hendricks (Jasper Keen), one of Royal’s rodeo buddies. 

Even farther back, Joy makes a friend in the form of Falling Star (Kimberly Guerrero), a fellow-time traveler. This woman hails from the 1970s, and has been in the past for over a decade. Though the pair discover they traveled here via different means when they compare notes, it leaves Joy no closer to a way home. Her storyline here ends with her tossing her dead smartphone into a campfire, accepting that she’ll never see her time, or her family, ever again. Her family, however, sees her…in a crumbling old photograph, proving she lived in the past.

Other than Billy’s dream and a cool shot in which Luke somehow “hears” light, nothing in this episode (“Traces to Somewhere”) necessarily bore out my hope after the premiere that the show has made some huge leap. But again, some growing pains are to be expected given the circumstances, and beyond the backpedaling done with Rhett and Maria — and the goddamned blue and orange! — nothing here is actively irksome. Josh Brolin remains a formidable screen presence. Will Patton’s squirrelly energy makes him an ideal foil. Messianic pixie dream girl Autumn has her faults, but you can’t locate them in the performance of Imogen Poots, who, like Noah Reid as Billy, appears to vibrate at a higher frequency than the other characters. I’m just hoping they all become more or less equally full of energy.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.